Disclosed herein are a method and apparatus for sharing and managing passcodes across multiple printing device drivers.
Presently, printing devices, such as printers, copiers, and multi-function devices, provide users the ability to print from electronic devices, such as desktop or laptop computers, handheld computers, or other electronic devices, to printing devices connected to the electronic devices. The electronic devices may be stand alone devices, or may be connected to the electronic devices over a network, such as in a business, campus, or personal computing environment, that includes one or more printing devices.
In order for a printing device to interface with, and function with the electronic device to which it is connected, a printing device driver is typically installed on the electronic device. A printing device driver is software that controls the printing device from the electronic device. The printing device driver may include a user interface which is typically accessed by a user through an operating system or an application program, such as a word processing program, a spreadsheet program, or other types of programs, and viewed on a display.
Many printing devices support a secure print feature that allows a user to submit, to a printing device, a print job with a passcode. The printing device can hold the print job until the user walks to the printing device, selects the job for release using a printing device user interface, and then enters the print job passcode. Upon entry of a valid print job passcode, the printing device prints the print job.
Unfortunately, different printing devices may have different format requirements for the passcodes. This creates a problem when a user has multiple printer drivers and wants to reuse the same passcode for all the printer drivers. For example, many office customers have the ability to print to a variety of printing devices that support the secure print feature. However, the format of the passcode is not consistent across all printing devices. Some printing devices have strict limitations on the passcode length and allowable characters due to the printing device user interface and to provide better document protection. For example, many printing devices without keyboards support a numeric four digit passcode. Other printing devices with a keyboard may support longer alphanumeric passcodes. If an invalid passcode is sent in a secure print job, the job cannot be printed at the printing device. No existing printing device drivers provide passcode management capability. Currently, printing device drivers do not share passcode data across different printing device drivers and each printing device driver has its own passcode separate from all others.
Thus, there is a need for a method and apparatus for sharing and managing passcodes across multiple printing device drivers.